Mass Effect 3 Preview, Interview, and Facebook Vote

BioWare has certainly poured a lot of resources for their Comic-con promotional effort, with live demonstrations for all of their upcoming titles and even a playable demo for Mass Effect 3, which gave GamesRadar the chance to offer us a hands-on preview of the title. Here’s a sampling:

Our play session began with choosing Shepard’s class (soldier, adept and sentinel were the three options available) and distributing skill points to our squad. At first glance the level-up system looks the same as Mass Effect 2’s system, but we soon saw that it’s much deeper than before, with branching skill trees within each stat.

When you add a point to a particular stat, a sub-menu pops up where you can further choose what direction you want that stat to take, starting at the fourth level of each stat. For example, adding a point to combat mastery might let you choose between an offensive or defensive boost on one level, and on the next level you might choose between a boost to special ammo damage or weapon power damage. And for biotic powers, would you rather have increased damage or quicker recharge times? Because each new level is an either/or choice, you can’t just max everything out you must decide how each character will take shape and what his or her specialties will be.

With class and stats out of the way, we began the mission in earnest, which was the same mission we saw in the E3 demo where Shepard must protect a female krogan that Mordin is escorting in some kind of medical pod. Liara and Garrus joined Shepard as squadmates, but disappointingly, Liara only had a little flavor dialogue during the mission, and Garrus had none at all. I asked about Garrus after the demo and I was assured that he would have plenty to say later, so not to worry but it was still a letdown not to hear him say anything.

As waves of Cerberus agents attacked, the most obvious difference in the combat is the new cover system, which was difficult to get used to because we’re so familiar with the old controls. In short, it feels very Gears of War. Hitting the A button near cover makes you take cover as usual, but when you’re away from cover pressing A makes Shepard do a dodge roll in the direction you point the analog stick. The rolling animation looks bizarre at first, because we’ve never seen Shepard move like that before, and it looks especially weird when you roll him toward the camera to dodge backwards. It doesn’t look bad, just really different compared to how Shepard moves in the previous two games.

Forbes interviews Seth Green and touches upon his role as Mass Effect’s Joker.

Another project you’ve got coming up is the final Mass Effect game. Have you done your voice work for that yet?

I’ve done the first half of it.

What do you think so far?

I got to tell you, I came onto this thing because I thought it was going to be a cool game, and I couldn’t believe how they exceeded my expectation and even my imagination. How cool it was, and the response from the first game was so big, that they went deep, and instead of just making a sequel, expanded the second game to make it even more amazing. And I didn’t even think that was possible.

So when I came in to do this recording stuff, I said, ‘˜Just give me some spoilers, give me some spoilers.’ And they gave me a couple of spoilers, and I wish I could tell you. I just have to say, all the fans that are asking me questions right now, who are like, ‘˜Wouldn’t it be awesome if they did this?’ They’re doing that. All the shit where you’re like ‘˜Oh, it would be so cool if maybe they would do this,’ they’re doing that!

So I’m really excited for this game to come out, I’m super excited for people to play with it. One of my favorite experiences is people coming up to me who have played that game, because to them, we’ve spent like 40 hours together. We’ve spent a long time together, and I have helped them through some really intensely emotional shit. And I have saved them, or I have like, educated them in the game. [Laughs.]

We’ve had this intense experience together, so when they come up and tell me that they like the game, it’s with gravity. And I really just enjoy that, I really like that.

And finally, BioWare is letting fans choose Female Shepard’s canon design on their Facebook page, presumably for the Collector’s Edition box art.